Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the United States is still on track for a Sunday signing even after the Israeli Defense Force struck Lebanon’s southern suburbs on June 14, 2026. He said he did not expect the Beirut strikes to derail the deal.
That answer came after Margaret Brennan opened Face the Nation with the question hanging over the moment: whether the strikes had blown up plans to sign a memorandum that day. Hegseth’s reply was blunt. “From all I know, we are on track,” he said, adding, “It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.”
The timing matters because CBS learned the potential US-Iran truce includes a vague reference to ending the fighting in Lebanon, and the interview was happening while the region was again in motion. The Israeli Defense Force said the Beirut strikes were retaliation for strikes on Israel, and Hegseth framed the bigger fight as one that still needed to be brought under control.
He said Iran needed to encourage Hezbollah to stop firing rockets into northern Israel, while also saying Israel had been “very measured” in its response. He said the United States would keep what it needed in military posture and that the deal was “performance-based,” with no money released to Iran until Iran performed. On the nuclear question, his position was absolute: Iran would never have a nuclear weapon. He said the nuclear material would be destroyed and removed, the program dismantled, and the arrangement would be “a wall to a bomb.”
The friction in his answer was plain. Hegseth said the strikes would not disrupt the signing, but he also tied the path forward to Hezbollah rocket fire stopping and Iran’s backing for Hezbollah ending. In other words, the deal was being presented as immune to the fighting even as the fighting remained part of the deal.
What was still not spelled out was the memorandum itself. Hegseth never named it, and the public outline remains limited to a truce framework with a passing reference to Lebanon. For now, the United States is saying the schedule holds. The harder question is whether the paper can be signed cleanly when the conflict it is meant to contain is still active.
